General aviation crashes are not uncommon.

We’ve had one commercial aviation crash in the US since Trump took office. That one crash had nothing to do directly with decisions he made (though decisions he has made certainly make them more likely as time goes on).

But the other four have been general aviation. Those types of accidents, unfortunately, occur more frequently. For example, in September 2024 a couple of men died in a crash near Provo, Utah. I know about this because my wife’s cousin knew them, and had recently spoken to the pilot about his new plane. But that crash wasn’t widely reported.

But since there was a commercial crash, followed by a crash of an air ambulance Learjet into a residential area, everyone is now reporting broadly on every incident. Just like how after Boeing had issues with the MAX8 and MAX9, everything that went wrong with a 737, even ones that were decades old, was suddenly “newsworthy” because people would click on headlines about Boeing. The kinds of maintenance issues that are normally just headaches for travelers and flight crews became national news, as long as the plane was a Boeing. Similarly, now it’s “anything with wings crashes, print it.”

I say all this not to defend Trump, or the year 2025, or anything like that, but just to provide context. You’re hearing about types of incidents you normally don’t hear about, and it’s making it seem like suddenly there are a lot of plane crashes.